Search

CBS 6 from Albany has the complete video of Carl Paladino going from slow burn to volcanic in mere seconds; this adds much more context to what happened than the cell phone video from last night. It shows Dicker asking Paladino a very simple question. Specifically, Dicker asks Cuomo what evidence he has that Cuomo had had extramarital affairs while married to his ex-wife, and whether or not making that accusation is going into the “gutter”.

Frankly, Carl doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Fred Dicker isn’t complicit with Cuomo or working in concert with the Cuomo campaign, and for Paladino to suggest that is absolutely insane. Apart from the quiet Buffalo News, the New York Post is potentially the best media friend Paladino could expect to have in this state. But because Paladino is too busy fighting with everybody and everything, he’s just throwing around accusations blindly. When the whole thing blows up in his arrogant face, Carl backs up to “I’m not politically correct”.

Sometimes, it’s not about being politically correct. It’s about being an adult and responding like an adult to adult questions from reporters.

And I don’t buy the photographs-through-the-window story for a second. What possible value would those photographs have to the New York Post?

In 2011, the money will be reduced by about $500,000, and Chris Collins is bypassing the nonpartisan CRAB and instead unilaterally making the decision as to which organizations will stay in business and which ones won’t. According to Matt Spina, here are the winners:

Theaters especially have been completely cut out from the proposed funding, because Collins says he only wants to fund culturals that attract visitors from outside the area. I find it hard to believe that the Hamburg Natural History Museum attracts Torontonians and Clevelanders, so that puts the lie to that explanation, and I wonder who it is who made the deal with Collins for that $41k. But Shakespeare in the Park and Explore ‘n More, which mostly serve the very Erie County residents who provide this funding? They lose. If they have to shut down, so do we.

Because the chosen 10 supposedly attract outsiders, Collins is happy to provide the Buffalo Niagara Convention & Visitors bureau – which he controls – with well over $7 million – that’s three million dollars’ worth more funding than the culturals that enrich the lives of people already living here. $7 million to attract tourists to see the above-listed 10 places. I guess they can cross the bridge to the Shaw if they want to see theater productions. (7.7% of the Shaw Festival budget comes from government grants).

But Chris Collins has decided that cultural tourists matter more to him than the people who live here and pay the taxes being allocated. It’s a big win if an unsuspecting tourist comes here to spend money, because it’s a net export and a way to earn tax dollars without providing any real services. Us freeloaders here who pay the highest property tax rates in the country can go pound stone, demanding things like “police”, “fire”, and other services in addition to our unreasonable demand for a “good quality of life” for our high taxes.

I don’t fundamentally disagree with the idea that not every cultural can qualify for funding all the time, but Chris Collins is the last person I want making those micromanaging funding decisions. If he wants to reduce funding by a few hundred thousand dollars, that’s fine, but he should permit the advisory board to make the allocations. Because the ECRAB hasn’t made any political deals with any of the recipients or their benefactors.

I’m not sure when the people in WNY will tire of Collins’ “like a business” BS schtick, but I presume it’s when the county is facing a big deficit and we’re back at a 2004-ish square one. Because fundamentally, nothing has changed between the way in which the county is run when Giambra was around and today.

Today, the House passed the Zadroga 9/11 Health Care Bill 268 – 160. Named for a New York City police officer who responded on 9/11 and died in 2006 from a respiratory illness that’s been causally linked to exposure to chemicals in the air on that day, the bill provides a $7.4 billion fund for the medical expenses and other compensation to those whose health is similarly affected.

But I hope people like Dicker keep pushing, prodding, looking, and provoking. We already know Paladino doesn’t have the character to be governor. We already know he has no strategy for policy success should he win. We’re coming to learn he doesn’t even remotely possess anything approaching the temperament to handle life as a public servant.

Thanks to the New York Times, the people of the world have learned that Buffalo is a terrible and strange place, devoid of regular people or normal life. It is squalor and despair. It is a civic existential crisis.

Empty of shops, it is instead full of empty people leading rudderless, meaningless lives where the only positive trend is in the number of Paladino signs being sought by flannel-clad, snowbound, axe-murdering rubes.

A city where even ennui comes to die, Buffalo is best reported on from the confines of one’s hotel room – a second-rate Priceline mainstay in a third-rate hellhole. The remainder is best seen from the back seat of a cab, or the parking lot of a Rite Aid.

I can only presume that Ms. Dominus’ cab ride shuttled her from BNIA to the Hyatt and back. Should she ever have the misfortune of being assigned another story on the eastern shore of Lake Erie, I have sent her an invitation by email to show her that there’s more to Buffalo than Paladino, empty Main Street storefronts, and longer-form versions of Gertrude Stein quips.

Now that Jim Domagalski, Pat Gallivan, and David DiPietro will all be battling to split the right-of-center vote three ways in Volker’s SD-59, Wyoming County nurse Cynthia Appleton is uniquely positioned to give the Dems a pick-up in the state senate.

Angle’s prior aversion to government-run health care — at least for others — has been no secret. She openly touts her intent to “Repeal and replace Obamacare” on her website, and even claimed recently that such broad legislation was actually unnecessary because there was “nothing wrong with our health care system.”

“Our healthcare system is the best in the world,” said Angle of the American system, once rated37th-best in the world, in August. “Our doctors are the best…The access is not what is being denied.”

Despite Angle’s contention that access to health care is not an issue, more than 18 percent of Nevada’s population is currently uninsured, nearly 3 percent higher than the national rate.

And in 2009, Angle railed against mandated health care coverage even for autism treatment and maternity leave.

“You know what I’m talking about. You’re paying for things that you don’t even need. They just passed the latest one, is everything that they want to throw at us now is covered under ‘autism,'” Angle said, using air quotes for the neurological disorder. “So, that’s a mandate that you have to pay for. How about maternity leave? I’m not going to have anymore babies, but I sure get to pay for it on my insurance. Those are the kinds of things that we want to get rid of.